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The Rogue Recap: January 7-13

The second week of 2017 said goodbye to a famous world leader and hello to some crazy proposals.

by The Rogue Staff

The second week of 2017 said goodbye to a famous world leader and hello to some crazy proposals.

The Rogue Recap takes a look back at the good, the bad, and the bizarre of the past week in the realms of entertainment, politics, culture, and society. In this installment:

Hollywood Likes Hollywood! Yay!

The Golden Globes, the awards show that Hollywood main cares about for marketing purposes, kicked off the 2016-2017 film awards season on Sunday. Musical romcom La La Land confirmed Hollywood’s love for movies about Hollywood by breaking the record for most awards won by a single film by nabbing all seven of the Globes it was nominated for, while television series The Crown, Atlanta, The Night Manager, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story passed around the lion’s share of TV awards. But the highlight of the night was Meryl Streep’s impassioned acceptance speech of the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award, during which she called for peace and respect in Trump’s new America, which then led her to getting an even more prestigious honor: to be called “overrated” by the president-elect, which puts her in the company of two presidents, Jon Stewart, and the cast of Hamilton.

The Yearly Groping of Jesus

Monday saw the annual procession of the image of the Black Nazarene from Quirino Grandstand to Quiapo Church — a twenty-hour and seven-kilometer journey involving millions of Filipinos clamoring for one touch of the dark-skinned Jesus. With claims that the statue is responsible for miraculous healings (while hundreds of people sustain injuries in the chaos), the Traslacion ritual remains both a powerful portrait of religious devotion, and a haunting enigma displaying the lengths people are willing to go for faith. Given the uncertain and morally ambiguous climate of our country today, living on a prayer is understandable.

Nautical Nonsense Ain’t Something We Wish

Monday also saw an announcement from Viacom International Media Networks of a planned underwater resort and Nickelodeon theme park to be built in Palawan in the next few years. Despite its insistence that the park would be environment-friendly and would promote the wonders of marine life, Nickelodeon received intense backlash from everybody — from major environmental groups like Greenpeace, to prominent Twitter personalities that can be relied on to have a hot take on things — pointing out that the mere presence of a 400-hectare structure would disrupt the ecology of the island. Succeeding statements from the TV network suggest that what they really meant to say was that the resort and theme park would be undersea themed and not actually built underwater. This failed to placate the anger of protesters, and only managed to disappoint the man-children who wanted to frolic in a pineapple under the sea.

Newsflash: Old Man Proposes New Tax That Doesn’t Affect Old Men

Because makeup is now apparently a sin, a partylist representative has proposed a “vanity tax” for beauty products and services — a suggestion meant to be an alternative to fuel taxes, and an idea that disregards the fact that many working Filipinos are required to wear makeup by their own companies, and expected to wear makeup to conform to local beauty standards. Makeup is the latest target to be included in the list of “popular things politicians want to attack,” which includes independent films, state universities, and the aforementioned Meryl Streep. For an alternative to this alternative, read our suggestion here.

THANKS OBAMA!

On January 10, President of the United States of America Barack Obama gave his final address to eighteen thousand people, as part of the transitioning of power from Obama to president-elect Donald Trump who will be sworn in next Friday, January 20. The outgoing Democrat — and the first African-American to serve as US president — ended on a note of gratitude and frustration; despite recounting the accomplishments of his administration and paying tribute to his family and allies, he expressed worry over the growth of divide that has escalated since the results of the November elections. Obama, who along with his progressive policies will leave behind a legacy of drone strikes and mass deportations, is actually a pretty complicated political figure. But given the political Armageddon that’s coming next, history will likely remember him as one of the greatest presidents of all time.